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October 25, 2007
How do you match the election rhetoric (and negative advertising) with underlying public opinion during a political campaign? Health for instance is a big public issue, but it is on the backburner. Was it explicitly addressed on the Big Debate, with its set positions and packaged answers? How are citizens reading and interpreting the campaign rhetoric? As citizens? Or as self-interested consumers weighing up competing market brands?
Sharpe
John Warhurst's op-ed in the Canberra Times has a go at matching election rhetoric with underlying public opinion. He links the Big Debate to Professor Ian McAllister's Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2004; a handbook that reports on the results of surveys conducted at the time of the past seven elections, together with earlier surveys.
Warhurst starts from Paul Kelly criticising Rudd for not being bolder by devoting much more of the tax cuts to services at leaders debate. Warhurst says that this this question of tax cuts versus increased services goes to the heart of the individualist/collectivist divide. He comments:
Those in the health, education and welfare sectors argue Australians are unselfish and actually put the public interest ahead of their private interests. But Australians might just flirt with this notion to make themselves feel good. The old saying is that elections are decided by the hip pocket nerve not altruism.
Warhust says that McAllister and his study colleagues confront this question directly. They ask voters whether they prefer less tax or more spending on social services:
When the question was first asked in 1987 during the Hawke-Keating period, 65 per cent favoured less tax and only 15 per cent favoured more spending on social services. By 2004, the gap had been eliminated. Thirty-seven per cent wanted more spending on social services and only 36 per cent wanted less tax.(Trends, p.28) The community is evenly balanced.
Why the imbalance in election promises towards tax cuts? Warhurst addresses this by asking whether Howard (and by implication Rudd) got it wrong by putting so many of his eggs in the tax cuts basket? Or is the electorate just kidding? He suggests that Howard and Rudd might be reading the electorate better when considering what voters do in the privacy of the ballot box.
It's an odd argument. Trust the polls in terms of voting intentions but dismiss them on surveys about policy options. Why not accept what the surveys show---public opinion is divided by the trend is towards better services. You would expect Howard and Costello to favour tax cuts --it's core Liberal philosophy. The question is why is the ALP doing the same, given the strong preference for redistribution of wealth noted by McAllister (51% to 20%). The ALP were trapped by Howard and Costello. The election has its own dynamic in terms of agenda setting.
Isn't that a better argument than saying citizens are deceitful and dishonest, in that they really are self-seeking (hip pocket) but are ashamed to admit that this is their nature? Why not question rational choice theory?
Why not think in terms of citizens as possessor of rights, entitlements, opportunities and resources that are the result of a process in the form of enfranchisement, consisting in the increasing liberty of the individual, the growth of the idea that individuals have rights and claims, and that they can assert themselves against the constituted authority of the land.
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Perhaps the problem lies in our expectation that the conduct of elections should make sense. Elections aren't about good governance, they're about winning a perceptions game.
In wanting improved services people are looking for good governance, the ideal situation after the election. By responding to the Liberal's tax cuts, Labor are giving us the good election.